WESLEYandWOOLMAN 


MEWTON 


MODERN  MESSAGES 


BX  8495   .W5  N48 
Newton,  Joseph  Fort, 
1950. 

Wesley  and  Woolman 


1876- 


WESLEY  AND 
WOOLMAN 

AN  APPRAISAL  AND 
COMPARISON 

(  MAY 
JOSEPH  FORT  NEWTON 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright.  1914,  by 
JOSEPH  FORT  NEWTON 


TO 


DR.  E.  J.  LOCKWOOD-REMEMBERING 
HIS  FIFTEEN  YEARS  OF  FRUITFUL 
MINISTRY  IN  CEDAR  RAPIDS,  IOWA 
—WITH  FRATERNAL  REGARD  AND 
JOYOUS  GOOD  WILL.     :     :     :     :  : 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

John  Wesley,  the  Methodist   9 

John  Woolman,  the  Quaker.  .......  34 

Wesley  and  Woolman   55 


5 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/wesleywoolmanappOOnewt 


FOREWORD 


Of  the  three  addresses  which  here  ap- 
pear as  chapters,  the  last  was  suggested 
by  the  first  two,  and  they  are  sent  forth 
with  the  hope  that  they  may  do  what  they 
were  sincerely  meant  to  do — recall  the 
church  to  the  faith  and  vision  of  two  of 
its  noble  leaders.  If  in  the  last  chapter 
more  emphasis  is  laid  on  Woolman  than 
on  Wesley,  it  is  because  the  former  is  less 
widely  known,  and  because  he  deserves  to 
be  reclaimed  to  the  grateful  and  venera- 
tive  memory  of  men  of  all  faiths.  Let  us 
hope  that,  in  an  age  of  reasonless  ration- 
alism, the  light  from  these  high  towers 
may  serve  to  restore  us  to  a  religion 
which  is  a  reasonable  service,  assured 
that  if  our  age  is  to  have  a  Burke  or  a 
Lincoln  for  the  service  of  the  state,  it  will 
7 


8 


FOREWORD 


be  wingless  and  alien  to  the  sky  if  it  does 
not  also  give  us  a  Wesley  or  a  Woolman 
for  the  life  of  the  church. 

J.  r.  N. 


CHAPTER  I 

JOHN  WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST 

On  February  23,  1791,  John  Wesley 
preached  his  last  sermon  at  Leatherhead. 
He  took  for  his  text  the  words:  "Seek 
ye  the  Lord  while  he  may  be  found;  call 
upon  him  while  he  is  near."  Thus  a  great 
voice  was  hushed — a  voice  which  they 
who  heard  entreated  that  it  might  speak 
to  them  forever.  The  next  day  he  wrote 
his  last  letter,  denouncing  "the  execrable 
villainy  of  slavery" ;  and  on  March  2  he 
died. 

What  a  grand,  shining,  solitary  figure ! 
He  was  eighty-eight,  and  his  long  life, 
with  its  toils,  its  homelessness,  its  fatigues, 
its  constant  triumph  in  Christ,  was  fin- 
ished. For  many  years  he  had  lived  in 
the  second  rest — that  rest  wherein  the 
yoke  of  Christ  is  easy  and  his  burden  is 
9 


10     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


light.  All  spiritual  pangs,  all  earthly 
cares  were  far  in  the  past,  and  there  was 
with  him,  as  with  his  friend  Fletcher,  "a 
tranquillity  in  the  blood  of  Christ  which 
keeps  the  soul  in  its  last  hour,  even  as  a 
garrison  keeps  a  city."  So  he  went  home 
from  a  great  life  which  he  himself  had 
described  as  "a  few  days  in  a  strange 
land." 

I 

One  can  touch  upon  but  a  few  aspects 
of  that  remarkable  career  in  one  hour. 
Much  has  been  written  about  Wesley,  and 
yet  it  cannot  be  said  that  we  have  a  really 
great  or  satisfying  book  about  him  and 
his  work.  Somehow,  the  man  is  too  big 
for  any  book.  Time  has  tried  Wesley 
severely,  but  its  terrible  testing  has  only 
made  him  a  more  towering  figure,  and 
to-day  he  is  as  worthy  of  the  title  of  Saint 
as  anyone  who  has  been  crowned  with  that 
distinction.  During  their  life  together, 
or  at  least  the  larger  part  of  it,  Charles 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  11 


Wesley  outtopped  his  brother,  but  in  the 
perspective  of  the  years  it  is  not  so.  In- 
deed, the  last  years  of  the  poet  were  dis- 
appointing and  obstructed,  contrasting 
painfully  with  the  glory  of  his  earlier 
years. 

There  was,  in  fact,  a  marked  difference 
between  the  two  men  in  temperament  as 
well  as  in  religious  outlook.  It  has  never 
been  expounded  at  length,  but  it  may  be 
indicated  in  this  way.  In  his  hymn  for 
midnight  Charles  Wesley  describes  him- 
self as 

Doubtful  and  insecure  of  bliss 
Since  death  alone  confirms  me  His; 

and  this  note  recurs  in  his  song.  Most  of 
the  great  hymn  writers,  and  especially 
those  of  the  Middle  Ages,  were  homesick 
for  heaven.  But  Charles  Wesle}-  goes 
beyond  any  of  them.  There  was,  as 
Adam  Clarke  detected,  a  morbid  element 
in  his  genius.  For  example,  in  his  diary 
for  August  13,  1744,  he  writes  of  a  fu- 


12     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


ncral :  "We  were  all  in  tears.  Mine,  I 
fear,  flowqd  from  envy  and  impatience  of 
life.  I  felt  throughout  my  soul  that  I 
would  rather  be  in  his  condition  than 
enjoy  the  whole  of  created  good.  The 
spirit  at  its  departure  had  left  marks  of 
happiness  upon  the  clay.  No  sight  upon 
earth  in  my  eyes  is  half  so  lovely." 

Charles  Wesley  was  an  extraordinary 
genius.  He  was  one  of  the  greatest,  if 
not  the  very  greatest,  of  hymn  writers ; 
but  his  temperament  was  gloomy,  and 
there  were  elements  of  danger  in  his  expe- 
rience. This  morbid  love  of  death  dic- 
tated many  of  his  lines,  and  while  they 
have  a  certain  fascination,  they  are  not 
wholesome.  It  is  a  painful,  indeed  a 
perilous,  attitude  of  soul.  If  you  will 
alter  one  word  in  the  lines  just  quoted, 
you  will  have  the  difference  between 
Charles  and  John  Wesley : 

Doubtful  and  insecure  ot  bliss 
Since    faith  alone  confirms  me  His. 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  13 


This  change,  I  believe,  has  been  made 
in  the  hj'mn  book,  and  it  sets  the  music 
to  a  finer,  firmer  key.  B}'  contrast,  the 
soul  of  John  Wesley  was  singularly 
serene,  almost  unpliable  indeed,  and  un- 
clouded by  fogs  of  the  spirit.  He  went 
through  the  world  a  pilgrim,  for  whom 
the  only  permanent  realities  were  the 
divine  life  and  the  awakening  of  that  life 
in  the  souls  of  men.  These  realities  suf- 
ficed him.  He  knew  what  he  was  talking 
about  when  he  spoke  of  God  and  the  soul 
— knew  the  deep  things,  the  strange 
paths,  and  the  floods  of  great  waters. 
In  journeyings  many,  in  labors  abun- 
dant, in  perils  oft,  he  carried  about  with 
him  everywhere  the  white  rose  of  a  blame- 
less life  and  the  pearl  of  peace.  No  leg- 
end of  the  old-time  saints  surpasses  the 
heroism,  the  wonder,  or  the  fruitful- 
ness  of  his  magnificent  and  ceaseless 
evangel. 


14.     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


II 

On  his  personal  side,  John  Wesley  was 
a  most  fascinating  man.  Whether  in  a 
small  company  or  a  vast  audience,  he 
ruled  men  because  he  charmed  them.  He 
was  born  with  "a  tendency  to  God"  and 
would  have  been  a  priest  of  faith,  no 
doubt,  had  he  lived  in  India — born  to  the 
love  of  God  as  to  the  love  of  his  wonder- 
ful mother.  From  his  father  he  inherited 
a  restless  activity,  a  poetic  sensibility, 
and  a  gift  of  expression  very  rare. 
"Mind  is  from  the  mother,"  says  Isaac 
Taylor;  and  from  his  mother  Wesley  re- 
ceived a  firm  will,  a  vivid  apprehension  of 
truth,  a  rich  fund  of  common  sense,  a 
genius  for  command,  a  touch  of  humor — 
and  a  nameless  grace  of  soul.  All  the 
children  of  the  Epworth  parsonage  were 
very  clever,  but  John  was  the  son  of  his 
mother — who  belongs  with  Monica  and 
Matilda  in  the  calendar  of  the  saints. 

He  was  a  small  man,  standing  only  five 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  15 


feet  six  inches  in  height,  and  slight  of 
figure.  Yet  his  muscles  were  as  whip- 
cords, his  bones  of  steel,  his  nerves  firm, 
without  an  ounce  of  useless  flesh  on  his 
frame.  As  a  human  machine  his  body  was 
well-nigh  perfect,  and  he  held  it  in  com- 
plete command.  He  could  go  to  sleep  at 
will  and  wake  up  at  the  moment  desired. 
Of  iron  endurance,  his  habits  were  simple 
to  austerity,  almost  ascetic  in  fact,  and 
he  wasted  no  energy  in  worry,  working 
with  an  industry  which  was  half  his 
genius.  He  tells  us  that  he  was  never  de- 
pressed for  an  hour  in  his  life.  Such  a 
physique,  always  in  working  trim,  is  an 
object  of  envy,  and  without  it  he  could 
not  have  done  his  work.  He  rode  all  over 
England,  traveling  in  all  almost  a  quarter 
of  a  million  miles,  mostly  on  horseback, 
speaking  sometimes  fifteen  times  a  week. 

Not  less  finely  trained  was  his  intellect. 
Neither  subtle  nor  profound,  his  mind  was 
acute,   candid,    comprehensive,    at  once 


16     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


inquisitive  and  acquisitive.  An  adept  in 
logical  dexterity,  keen  in  wit,  swift  in 
irony,  he  loved  to  argue.  He  was  a  pro- 
digious student,  reading  books  of  all 
kinds,  walking  and  riding — -his  saddle  his 
study  chair.  He  was  a  remarkable  lin- 
guist. With  his  Moravian  friends  he 
talked  German,  to  the  Spanish  Jews  in 
Georgia  he  spoke  Spanish,  and  to  the 
prisoners  at  Knowle  he  talked  French. 
Indeed,  he  may  be  said  to  have  been  a 
pioneer  in  the  study  of  German  in  Eng- 
land. He  read  also  Greek  and  Hebrew. 
An  expert  in  philosophy,  he  was  equally 
familiar  with  classical  lore.  Shakespeare 
he  read  and  annotated.  He  studied  the 
church  Fathers,  the  Mystics,  the  Saints 
of  the  church  universal,  and  edited  edi- 
tions of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  Bunyan, 
Baxter,  Edwards,  Rutherford,  and  Law. 
Minds  as  far  apart  as  Swift  and  Milton 
won  his  love,  though  his  literary  estimates 
were  often  awry.    He  admired  every  kind 


WESLEY,  THE  METHOt)IST  17 


of  ability,  including  that  of  Gar  rick,  the 
actor.  Always  practical,  no  truth  held 
his  interest  unless  it  could  be  applied.  At 
Oxford,  when  the  university  was  indiffer- 
ent to  science,  he  was  making  experi- 
ments in  optics  and  devouring  the  writ- 
ings of  Franklin.  He  was  a  great  talker, 
though  Dr.  Johnson  grumbled  that  he  was 
always  too  busy  to  stay  and  have  the  talk 
out. 

As  with  body  and  mind,  so  with  the 
inner  life  of  the  soul — Wesley  was  ever 
a  Methodist.  That  is,  he  had  a  method  of 
spiritual  culture  which  he  practiced  faith- 
fully, even  rigidly,  from  the  first.  Hence 
the  group  of  students  at  Oxford  who  fol- 
lowed his  lead  and  became  known  as 
Methodists,  and  by  some  as  the  Holy 
Club.  Their  method  included  reading  the 
Bible  and  books  of  divinity,  meditation, 
prayer,  fasting,  visiting  the  sick,  the 
poor,  and  those  in  prison.  These  things 
became  fixed  habits  with  Wesley.  After 


18     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


his  conversion,  and  to  the  end,  he  kept  up 
his  austere  discipline  of  soul,  finding  it 
useful  in  "the  practice  of  salvation."  He 
fasted  every  Friday  all  the  year  round, 
not  that  he  attached  any  merit  or  magic 
to  the  habit,  but  because  he  found  it  an 
aid  to  the  spiritual  life.  Here,  as  every- 
Avhere,  he  has  much  to  teach  us  for  the 
health  of  our  spirits  in  an  age  self-indul- 
gent and  given  to  the  worship  of  ease. 

There  are  those  who  say  that  Wesley 
was  not  a  genius,  but  they  err.  He  had 
the  three  qualities  which  Emerson  said 
are  the  tokens  of  supreme  greatness — dis- 
interestedness, courage,  and  practical 
capacity.  There  was  in  him,  besides,  a 
power  of  personality  possessed  by  no  one 
else  known  to  me  save  Julius  Caesar  and 
Napoleon.  Quiet,  soft-spoken,  gentle  in 
manner,  he  could  overawe  a  ruffian.  Time 
and  time  again  he  was  assailed  by  angry 
mobs,  seeking  his  life.  Always  he  would 
walk  out  to  meet  the  mob,  shake  hands 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  19 


with  its  leader,  and  speak  a  few  words  to 
him.  That  was  enough.  The  leader  be- 
came his  friend,  and  sometimes  his  fol- 
lower, on  the  spot,  and  defied  the  mob  to 
touch  Wesley.  Many  such  instances  are 
recorded  in  his  Journal,  which,  from  be- 
ing "a  religious  time-table,  gradually 
broadens  into  a  detailed,  life-long  auto- 
biography." No  one  has  ever  explained 
this  power.  No  one  can.  We  may  say 
that  it  was  the  charm  of  a  great  soul 
made  effective  by  an  iron  will  and  a  cool 
courage;  but  that  is  as  far  as  we  can  go. 
It  gave  an  almost  uncanny  power  to  his 
preaching.  Men  who  came  to  mock  at 
him  were  often  seen  falling  as  if  smitten 
by  an  unseen  hand.  He  spoke  simply, 
calmly,  plainly,  without  appeal  to  the 
emotions,  and  yet  his  audience  would  be 
wrought  to  frenzy.  So  much  so  that 
Whitefield  chided  him  for  it.  Yet,  try 
as  he  did,  he  could  not  prevent  such 
things. 


20     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


If  we  turn  to  the  sermons  of  Wesley  as 
delivered,  they  leave  us  perplexed  as  to 
the  secret  of  his  great  influence  over  men. 
Lucid,  logical,  direct,  always  earnest, 
often  eloquent,  at  once  lofty  and  familiar, 
it  must  be  said  that  they  furnish  us  no 
key  to  his  power.  As  William  Watson 
said,  there  is  nothing  imaginative  in  their 
style,  nothing  to  move  the  passions 
through  the  fancy,  nothing  gorgeous, 
nothing  mystic.  He  might  have  added 
that  they  have  little  or  nothing  that  could 
be  called  popular  either  in  manner  or  in 
matter.  How  such  sermons  took  such  a 
hold  upon  the  audiences  of  which  we  read 
in  the  Journal  is  a  marvel.  Put  the 
famous  sermon  preached  first  at  Saint 
Mary's,  Oxford,  and  often  afterward, 
alongside  the  sermon  of  Spurgeon  on  the 
same  text,  and  the  contrast  is  striking. 
As  we  read  the  two,  Spurgeon  has  a  rich- 
ness and  fullness  of  power  to  which 
Wesley  does  not  come  near.     And  yet 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  21 


Wesley  swayed  men  as  Spurgeon  never 
did — even  as  the  winds  sway  the  clouds. 
How  explain  it?  There  remains  only  the 
motto :  "According  to  this  time  it  shall  be 
said,  'What  hath  God  wrought !'  " 

Such  was  the  man  who  rode  to  and  fro 
over  England  in  the  days  of  Walpole, 
preaching  forty-two  thousand  sermons, 
organizing  a  religious  rapture  into  a 
great  reformation.  He  breathed  upon 
the  evils  of  his  time  with  a  fiery  breath  of 
purification.  With  the  green  grass  for 
his  pulpit  and  the  blue  sky  for  his  sound- 
ing board,  he  seemed  always  in  front  of 
whatever  was  making  for  righteousness. 
So  the  mighty  gospel  won  its  way— among 
the  tinners  in  Cornwall,  the  colliers  in 
Kingswood,  the  drunkards  of  Moorfields, 
and  the  harlots  of  Drury  Lane.  What 
hath  God  not  wrought! 


Ill 

Lord  Macaulay  says  that  Wesley  saved 


22     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


England  from  something  like  a  French 
Revolution  by  winning  to  Christ  the  men 
who  would  have  led  such  a  revolt.  Reli- 
gion seemed  dying,  or  dead.  The  churches 
were  empty,  dirty,  neglected,  and  falling 
into  disrepair.  If  anyone  mentioned  reli- 
gion, men  laughed.  So  profound  was  the 
stupor  that  godly  men  openly  despaired, 
and  to  many  it  seemed  as  if  Christianity 
had  waxed  old,  and  was  ready  to  perish. 
Bishop  Butler,  the  one  great  thinker  of 
that  day,  sat  oppressed  in  his  castle,  with 
not  a  hope  of  surviving.  He  did  not  know 
that  "there  was  a  man  sent  from  God, 
whose  name  was  John,"  a  mighty  leader, 
aglow  with  white  light,  magnetic  with 
moral  sincerity,  raised  up  for  that  hour. 

When  Butler  died  Wesley  had  finished 
fourteen  years  of  his  unparalleled  apos- 
tolate,  and  within  earshot  of  the  Bishop's 
castle  the  Methodist  colliers  were  singing 
their  songs  of  joy.  The  sleep  had  been 
broken.    The  sun  was  up  and  the  dew  was 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  23 


on  the  grass.  But,  alas !  Butler,  like 
Sidney  Smith,  was  blind  to  the  extraor- 
dinary visitation  and  work  of  God  before 
his  eyes.  Sir  Walter  Scott  saw,  under- 
stood, and  rejoiced.  But  Wesley  was 
more  than  a  great  evangelist.  He  was 
a  sagacious  and  skilled  organizer  for  the 
practice  of  the  religious  life.  No  one 
denounced  more  fervently  than  he  the  en- 
thusiasm which  dies  away  in  gray  ashes, 
unapplied.  After  evangelization  he  knew 
there  must  be  instruction,  or  all  is  in 
vain.  Great  as  a  kindler  of  the  white 
flame,  no  one  has  ever  planned  more  wisely 
to  conserve  and  utilize  it. 

The  machinery  of  Methodism  was  not 
made  to  order.  It  grew.  Wesley  ruled 
firmly,  and  his  fine  intelligence  directed 
each  movement  and  method  to  a  definite 
end.  For  this  task  he  was  well  equipped 
with  rare  executive  abilities  and  an  invin- 
cible will.  He  was,  moreover,  a  great 
teacher  of  men,  alike  in  theology  and  eth- 


24     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


ics,  and  his  instruction  was  rich  and  full. 
He  insisted  on  the  possibility  of  Christian 
perfection.  He  held  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  to  be  gospel  law,  to  be  obeyed  and 
lived.  His  teaching,  for  example,  about 
money  and  its  uses  is  sorely  in  need  of 
emphasis  in  our  day.  He  was  not  rich 
himself,  but  he  gave  away  a  fortune  and 
died,  as  he  had  lived,  Avithout  a  purse. 
Thus,  to  his  gospel  of  free  grace  he  joined 
a  high  and  stern  morality,  and,  what  is 
equally  vital,  a  method  of  inner  culture 
whereby  men  grew  in  grace.  This  last 
we  have  neglected  too  much  and  too  long, 
and  the  results  are  visible  all  about  us. 

No  sketch  of  Wesley  must  fail  to  take 
account  of  his  labors  as  an  adjuster  of 
the  intolerable  destinies  of  the  poor.  He 
was  a  great  democrat — despite  his  Tory 
proclivities  in  politics.  While  he  revered 
intellect  and  character,  purple  and  fine 
linen  awed  him  not  at  all.  He  saw  the 
human  soul  beneath  the  garb  of  a  convict, 


WESLEY,  THE  IMETHODIST  25 


the  rags  of  a  beggar,  the  fustian  of  the 
laborer,  and  it  was  the  souls  of  men  that 
he  sought  as  other  men  seek  dollars.  He 
applied  the  white  light  of  the  gospel  to 
the  slave  trade,  to  the  treatment  of  pris- 
oners and  of  paupers,  to  the  care  of 
orphans  and  the  abolition  of  vice.  He 
would  like,  he  said,  "to  join  hands  with 
God  to  help  the  poor  man  live."  He  stood 
forth  a  helper  of  the  struggling,  a 
champion  of  the  Aveak,  and  an  educator 
of  the  people  in  righteousness  and  well- 
being. 

IV 

If  we  would  know  the  secret  of  all  this 
tireless  and  benign  industry,  we  must  go 
back  to  May  24,  1738.  "In  the  evening," 
writes  Wesley,  "I  went  very  unwillingly 
to  a  society  in  Aldersgate  Street,  where 
one  was  reading  Luther's  preface  to  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans.  About  a  quarter 
before  nine,  while  he  was  describing  the 
change  which  God  works  in  the  heart 


26     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


througli  faith  in  Christ,  /  felt  my  heart 
strangely  warmed.  I  felt  that  I  did  now 
trust  Christ  alone — that  he  had  taken 
away  my  sins,  even  mine."  That  is  the 
secret;  and  that  night  is  a  great  date  in 
the  story  of  England  and  of  the  world — 
for  the  most  far-reaching  issues  are  de- 
termined, not  on  red  fields,  but  in  the 
solitary  places  of  the  spirit. 

Yet  we  must  not  misunderstand  that 
strange  warming  of  the  heart  which 
changed  Wesley  from  a  seeker  to  a  finder, 
from  a  struggler  to  victor.  It  was  less 
a  conversion  than  a  transfiguration.  He 
was  not  a  sinner  turned  into  a  good  man, 
as  has  many  times  been  the  case.  Far 
from  it.  He  was  a  minister  who  had  been 
a  missionary — exact  in  morals,  punctil- 
ious in  ritual,  rigid  in  self-denial,  help- 
ful to  the  needy,  eager  to  serve  God  and 
"do  a  little  good  in  the  world."  But  he 
had  never  found  peace,  and  no  man  can 
do  a  great  work  without  peace  in  his 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  27 


heart.  What,  then,  was  the  change 
wrought  in  Wesley?  He  tells  us  that  he 
had  been  a  slave;  and  now  he  was  a  son. 
He  discovered  the  greatest  of  all  truths — 
that  God  l.oved  him,  and  the  feeling  of 
love  cast  out  fear  and  filled  his  soul  with 
a  song  of  gladness.  "Then  I  was  some- 
times, if  not  often,  conquered.  Now  I 
am  always  conqueror."  From  a  timid 
servant  he  had  become  a  son  of  the  Most 
High — set  free  from  bondage  into  the 
light  and  joy  of  a  victorious  life. 

As  he  said  in  a  letter:  "If  it  were  pos- 
sible to  shake  the  traditional  evidence  of 
Christianity ;  still  he  hath  the  Eternal 
Evidence — and  every  true  believer  has 
the  witness  in  himself — which  stands 
firm  and  unshaken."  In  that  sentence  we 
have  the  key  to  the  life  of  Wesley,  and 
how  he  came  to  be  so  great  a  power  in  the 
world.  Once  hesitating,  and  morbidly 
afraid  of  death,  there  came  a  day  when 
he  attained  to  that  sure  knowledge  of 


28     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


which  his  father  spoke  so  frequently  on 
his  deathbed:  "The  inward  witness,  son, 
the  inward  witness,  this  is  the  strongest 
proof  of  Christianity."  When  he  arrived 
at  this  assurance  his  fears  fled,  his  whole 
life  took  on  a  new  aspect,  and  he  became 
a  mighty  soldier  for  social  righteousness 
— one  of  that  worshiping  and  toiling 
host  whose  music  is  the  joy  and  hope  of 
the  race. 

Thereafter  he  judged  men  by  this  inner 
experience  of  the  liberty  of  the  gospel, 
and  made  it  the  test  of  fellowship.  To 
me,  this  is  his  great  meaning  to  the  his- 
tory of  the  church,  and  the  wisest  insight 
of  his  whole  life.  It  is  the  secret  too  of 
his  beautiful  catholicity  of  soul,  espe- 
cially in  his  later  years,  which  is  a  trea- 
sure forever.  If  men  love  God  and  serve 
him  as  sons,  they  may  be  friends  and 
fellow  workers,  no  matter  how  far  apart 
they  may  be  in  theological  point  of  view. 
Wesley  saw  that  at  last.    He  saw  that 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  29 


Whitefield  and  William  Law — two  shining 
souls — with  whom  he  had  differed,  were 
one  with  him  in  the  thing  most  worth 
while.  Indeed,  he  made  the  great  words 
of  William  Law  his  own :  "Perhaps  what 
the  best  heathens  called  Reason ;  and 
Solomon,  Wisdom;  Saint  Paul,  Grace  in 
general ;  Saint  John,  Righteousness  or 
Love ;  Luther,  Faith ;  Fenelon,  Virtue  may 
be  only  different  expressions  for  one  and 
the  same  blessing — the  light  of  Christ 
shining  in. different  degrees  under  differ- 
ent dispensations.  Why,  then,  so  many 
words,  and  so  little  charity  exercised 
among  Christians  about  the  particular 
term  of  a  blessing  experienced  more  or  less 
by  all  righteous  men !" 

That  is  the  true  liberalism,  and  the  only 
kind  worthy  of  the  name.  "If  thy  heart 
is  as  my  heart,  give  me  thy  hand" — that 
is  the  ground  of  Christian  union.  We  do 
not  want  uniformity  of  opinion.  It  would 
be  a  curse.    We  want  a  unity  of  inner 


30     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


experience  of  things  immortal,  and  a 
variety  of  thought  like  the  variety  of  a 
flower  garden.  Forever  memorable  was 
the  letter  of  Wesley  to  the  Bishop  of 
Lincoln.  What  golden  words  are  these! 
"Alas!  my  Lord,  is  this  any  time  to  per- 
secute a  man  for  the  sake  of  conscience.'' 
I  beseech  you  do  as  you  would  be  done  to. 
You  are  a  man  of  sense;  you  are  a  man 
of  learning;  nay,  I  verilj^  believe — what 
is  of  infinitely  more  value — you  are  a 
man  of  piety.    Then  think  and  let  think." 

If  the  church  had  been  willing  to  think 
and  let  think,  what  unspeakable  woes 
would  have  been  avoided!  As  Wesley 
said,  "If  we  could  once  bring  all  our 
preachers  to  insist  on  these  two  points — 
Christ  dying  for  us,  and  Christ  reigning 
in  us — we  should  shake  the  trembling  gates 
of  hell."  Let  the  church  return  to  this 
great  Teacher  and  it  will  return  to  influ- 
ence and  power.  With  a  rich,  warm, 
mystical  experience  as  the  basis  of  its 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  31 


fellowship  and  the  center  of  its  thought, 
allowing  and  inspiring  the  widest  liberty 
of  thought  and  inquiry,  let  it  bring  its 
light  and  power  to  the  service  of  the  great 
common  people,  as  Wesley  did — and  a 
new  day  will  dawn !  May  it  come  quickly 
and  not  too  long  delay  ! 

V 

How  beautiful  was  the  old  age  of  Wes- 
le^-^ !  It  was  a  great  sunset,  full  of  peace 
and  prophecy,  aglow  with  that  mellow 
"old  experience"  of  things  eternal — like 
the  oncoming  evening  and  the  star- 
crowned  night.  To  be  sure,  he  had  been 
robbed  of  domestic  happiness,  partly  by 
the  action  of  others,  and  partly  by  his 
own  unwisdom.  But  he  was  never  sour, 
nor  melancholy,  nor  envious.  There  too 
he  was  conqueror.  He  was  never  deeply 
rooted  to  the  earth.  He  lived  for  the  im- 
perishable, not  for  the  things  that  death 
makes  valueless  and  which  exist  by  pass- 


32     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


ing  away.  He  dreaded  not  pain,  nor  ill- 
ness, nor  death.  The  more  one  reads  hid 
life  the  more  one  is  impressed  with  his 
detachment.  At  a  great  price  he  achieved 
his  spiritual  freedom,  but  his  victory  was 
complete. 

What  a  picture  was  that  at  Kingswood 
when,  at  the  age  of  eighty-one,  he 
preached  under  the  shade  of  great  trees 
which  he  himself  had  planted,  to  the  chil- 
dren and  grandchildren  of  his  old  dis- 
ciples, who  had  long  passed  away.  Of 
like  kind  was  that  scene  at  Bolton,  after 
the  death  of  Charles  Wesley,  when  the  old 
man  gave  out  the  hymn,  "Come,  O  Thou 
Traveler  Unknown."  When  he  tried  to 
read  the  lines. 

My  company  before  is  gone. 
And  I  am  left  alone  with  Thee, 

his  voice  broke,  and  he  sat  down,  hid  his 
face  in  his  hands,  and  wept.  Shortly  after- 
ward he  visited  his  friend,  the  widow  of 
Fletcher,  and  she  wrote  that  his  soul  was 


WESLEY,  THE  METHODIST  33 


"far  more  sunk  in  God,  and  such  an  unc- 
tion attends  his  words  that  each  sermon 
was  indeed  spirit  and  life."  His  last 
uttered  desire  was  that  his  friends  should 
scatter  broadcast  a  sermon  he  had  just 
written  on  the  Love  of  God!  Such  lives 
make  our  earth  a  sacred  place.  They 
touch  one  to  wistfulness,  and  set  one 
thinking  as  to  the  investment  of  his  own 
power  of  light  and  leading  here  among 
men. 

In  the  solemn  aisle  of  Westminster 
Abbey — that  great  temple  of  Silence  and 
Reconciliation — you  will  find  the  busts  of 
John  and  Charles  Wesley,  near  that  of 
Isaac  Watts.  Three  great  sayings  of 
the  evangelist,  statesman,  reformer,  and 
saint  are  there — one,  full  of  breadth,  "I 
look  on  all  the  world  as  my  parish" ;  one, 
full  of  death-defying  hope,  "God  buries 
his  workmen,  but  continues  his  work" ;  an- 
other, the  last  words  of  his  life,  "The  best 
of  all  is,  God  is  with  us !" 


CHAPTER  II 
JOHN  WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER 
I 

If  one  wishes  to  take  a  long  journey 
into  a  quaint  and  strange  place,  let  him 
dip  into  the  Journal  of  George  Fox.  It 
is  like  a  little  rusty  gate  which  opens 
right  into  the  heart  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  so  that  when  we  go  in  by  it  we 
find  ourselves  pilgrims  with  the  quiet  old 
Quaker  in  the  oddest  kind  of  England. 
What  an  England  it  was ! — hot-blooded, 
undignified,  fantastic,  and  in  many  ways 
inconsequent. 

Ecclesiastically  the  country  was  in 
chaos.  The  pulpits  of  the  Episcopacy 
were  filled  with  Puritan  preachers.  All 
sorts  of  queer  sects  flourished,  some  of 
them  small  enough  to  be  called  insects.  A 
kind  of  nominal  toleration  was  in  vogue, 
34 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  35 


and  all  the  land,  good,  bad,  and  indiffer- 
ent, was  eager  for  religious  argument. 
Everywhere,  in  church,  in  market  place, 
and  in  courthouse,  the  wordy  warfare 
went  on.  Men  used  Bible  texts  as  clubs 
wherewith  to  belabor  each  other,  which  is 
ever  a  sure  sign  that  religious  life  is  at  a 
low  ebb. 

George  Fox,  born  eight  years  after 
the  death  of  Shakespeare,  was  the  son  of 
a  weaver,  and  early  apprenticed  as  a 
shoemaker.  Unlearned  in  the  schools, 
he  was  a  man  of  great  ability,  "religious, 
inward,  still,  and  keenly  observing." 
Brooding  much  over  the  state  of  religion 
in  his  day,  he  felt  the  stirrings  of .  the 
Spirit  of  God  within  him  to  proclaim  the 
gospel  of  the  Inner  Light  as  superior, 
though  not  necessarily  opposed,  to  the' 
authority  of  church  and  Bible.  In  1643 
he  set  forth  on  his  great  black  horse  "to 
declare  the  day  of  the  Lord,"  and  many 
adventures  befell  him.    Truly,  he  was  an 


36     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


arresting  figure,  and  his  service  to  the 
liberty  of  faith  and  the  reality  of  the  inner 
life  of  the  Spirit  entitled  him  to  high 
honor. 

Now,  that  immovable  old  Friend  said 
some  keen  things  about  our  religious  an- 
cestors, but,  like  the  soldier  who  saw  him 
assailed  by  a  mob,  we  are  ready  to  say, 
"Sir,  I  see  you  are  a  man."  He  never 
took  the  bark  off  his  words,  and  they 
were  sometimes  a  bit  rough.  He  called 
all  churches  steeple-houses,  and  all 
preachers  priests  and  hirelings.  Natu- 
rally, this  did  not  add  to  his  popularity 
among  the  clergy,  and,  as  he  insisted  on 
speaking  out  in  meeting,  he  spent  much 
time  in  jail.  When  he  appeared  in  a 
village  the  clergy  would  assemble  with 
their  Bibles  and  attack  him  with  argu- 
ments. He  never  lost  his  temper;  he  left 
that  to  his  opponents;  and  when  he  got 
the  best  of  the  argument — as  he  usually 
did — they  would  pound  him  first  with  their 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  37 


Bibles,  and  then  with  fists  and  sticks. 
Next  day  he  would  appear  in  the  village 
again,  to  the  amazement  of  all,  who  there- 
upon gave  him  respectful  attention. 

After  that  there  was  nothing  to  do  but 
to  bring  him  up  before  the  magistrate, 
Avhere  another  argument  usually  took 
place.  Fox  outwitted  the  bench  as  well 
as  the  pulpit,  and  it  was  in  one  of  these 
parleys  with  Justice  Bennett,  when  he 
"bid  the  judge  tremble  at  the  word  of  the 
Lord,"  that  he  was  first  called,  in  mock- 
ery, a  Quaker.  What  a  scene  was  that 
before  Judge  Glynne,  then  Chief  Justice 
of  England !  Fox  was  brought  in  and 
uttered  his  usual  gentle  blessing,  "Peace 
be  among  you." 

"What  be  these  you  have  brought  into 
the  Court?"  asked  the  Judge  of  the  jailer. 
Then  turning  to  the  prisoners  he  said, 
"Why  do  you  not  put  off  your  hats  ?" 

"Where  did  any  magistrate,  king,  or 
judge,  from  Moses  to  Daniel,  command 


38     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


any  to  put  off  their  hats?  Where  does 
the  law  of  England  command  any  such 
thing?  Show  me  that  law,"  asked  Fox 
with  that  imperturbable  serenity  so  exas- 
perating to  his  foes. 

"Take  him  away,  prevaricator,  I'll  ferk 
him,"  cried  the  Judge,  hot  with  anger, 
his  face  as  red  as  a  berry  in  a  bush.  So 
Fox  went  away  to  jail.  After  a  while  the 
Judge  thought  he  had  an  argument  that 
would  silence  the  prisoner,  and  had  Fox 
brought  into  court  again. 

"Come,"  said  the  Judge  to  the  prisoner, 
"where  had  they  hats  from  Moses  to 
Daniel;  come,  answer  me:  I  have  you 
fast  now." 

"Thou  mayest  read  in  the  third  of 
Daniel  that  the  three  children  were  put 
into  the  fiery  furnace  with  their  coats, 
their  hose,  and  their  hats  on,"  said  Fox, 
quietly. 

"Take  him  away.  Jailer!"  cried  the 
Judge,  more  angry  than  ever.    Fox  was 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  39 


led  away  and  thrust  among  thieves,  where 
he  was  kept  a  great  while. 

None  the  less,  between  spells  in  jail  the 
old  Friend  went  about  his  mission  and 
won  many  followers,  who  were  filled  with 
an  ardent  zeal  to  convert  others.  Some 
of  them  went  to  the  West  Indies,  to 
America,  to  Jerusalem,  to  Malta;  and 
Mary  Fisher — for  women  were  also  among 
their  preachers — went  to  Sm3'rna  and 
Greece,  and  even  sought  audience  with  the 
Sultan.  Everywhere  they  suffered  bitter 
persecution.  Not  until  1689,  the  year  be- 
fore Fox  died,  did  England  grant  them 
toleration.  Carlyle  has  left  us  unforget- 
able  pictures  of  the  interviews  between 
Fox  and  Cromwell,  and  how  each  strong 
man  hailed  the  other  instantly.  Fox  had 
no  notion  of  forming  a  separate  sect,  be- 
lieving that  his  truth  would  conquer  the 
church,  as  it  seems  well-nigh  to  have  done. 
Yet  his  followers  naturally  drew  together 
and  formed  a  church  in  1666. 


40     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


"I  was  sent,"  said  the  gentle  Quaker, 
"by  the  divine  Power  and  Spirit  of  God 
to  bring  people  off  from  their  own  ways 
to  Christ,  the  new  and  living  way,  and 
from  their  churches,  which  men  had  made 
and  gathered  to  the  Church  of  God,  the 
General  Assembly  written  in  heaven.  .  .  . 
And  I  was  to  bring  the  people  that  they 
might  know  the  pure  religion,  might  visit 
the  fatherless,  the  widows,  and  strangers, 
and  keep  themselves  from  the  spots  of 
the  world." 

Happily,  such  teaching  is  now  far 
wider  than  the  Society  of  Friends;  in 
the  heart  of  it,  it  is  as  wide  as  the 
world.  The  England  of  George  Fox 
has  passed  away,  and  much  that  was  dis- 
tinctive of  early  Quakerism  has  passed 
away  also.  For  us,  the  name  "Quaker" 
evokes  visions  of  drab  cloth,  silver-gray 
heads,  and  old-fashioned  speech,  of  fra- 
grant lives  and  sweet  deeds  of  charity, 
and  faces  benign  in  their  serenity  and 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  41 


goodness.  In  their  revolt  from  external 
form  and  their  plea  for  more  inwardness, 
and  therefore  for  more  realit}^  in  the  reli- 
gious life,  Fox  and  his  followers  helped 
forward  the  cause  of  faith  and  the  higher 
life. 

II 

Quakers  came  early  to  our  shores,  but 
even  here  they  were  not  very  kindly  re- 
ceived. So  dense  was  the  cloud  of  prej- 
udice in  those  "good  old  days"  that  these 
gentle  folk  were  held  to  be  dangerous. 
Four  of  them,  Mary  Dyer  being  one,  were 
hanged  on  Boston  Common — think  of  it ! 
They  settled  in  West  Jersey  under  Fen- 
wick,  and  in  Pennsylvania  under  Penn, 
and  no  influence  has  been  a  greater  bless- 
ing to  our  national  life.  When  the  old 
Quaker  laid  off  his  drab  coat  and  picked 
up  his  ax,  he  laid  the  foundation  of  some 
of  the  best  things  among  us.  A  quietist  in 
faith,  he  has  been  nobly  active  in  all  good 
things,  from  the  days  of  Penn  to  Lundy 


42     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


and  Lincoln,  and  from  the  songs  of  Whit- 
tier  to  the  service  of  Jane  Addams. 

Into  this  tradition  of  sweet  piety  and 
earnest  endeavor  John  Woolman  was 
^^orn  in  West  Jersey,  in  1720,  and  the 
record  of  his  beautiful  life,  as  he  has  left 
it  in  his  Journal,  is  a  precious  legacy. 
/  "Get  the  writings  of  John  Woolman  by 
v  heart,"  said  Charles  Lamb,  who  more  than 
once  in  his  essays  speaks  in  praise  of  this 
saintly  man.  There  is,  in  truth,  a  rare 
beauty  in  the  writings  of  Woolman,  an 
exquisite  sweetness  and  purity  of  spirit. 
He  was  no  master  of  high  literary  art, 
and  his  Journal,  like  that  of  Wesley, 
makes  such  use  of  Bible  words  and  phrases 
as  to  blur,  at  times,  his  own  individuality 
of  style.  Yet  it  is  a  golden  book,  and 
style  was  the  last  thing  he  thought  of. 
No  one  can  read  it  without  feeling  that 
here  was  a  citizen  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  a  man  whose  only  ambition  was 
to  know  the  will  of  God  and  to  do  it. 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  43 


Only  a  humble  tailor,  as  Jacob  Behman 
was  a  cobbler,  yet  he  was  a  man  mighty  in 
gentleness,  and  if  some  unseen  hand  were 
to  write  the  history  of  his  influence,  what 
a  testimony  it  would  be! 

"I  have  often  felt  a  motion  of  love  to 
leave  some  hints  in  writing  of  my  expe- 
riences of  the  goodness  of  God,"  runs  the 
first  line  of  his  Journal.  That  was  the 
keynote  of  his  life  of  benign  industry  in 
the  cause  of  liberty,  righteousness,  sim- 
plicity, and  peace.  His  religion,  which 
was  his  life,  may  be  summed  up  in  the 
word  "love."  He  held  the  faith,  so  little 
acted  upon,  that  God  is  Love,  and  that  to 
live  with  him  in  "inward  stillness  of  heart 
and  happy  humility,"  working  out  his 
loving  Spirit  in  our  lives,  is  the  whole 
duty  of  man  and  the  highest  wisdom.  He 
thought  of  humanity  as  a  pantheist  thinks 
of  God,  identifying  himself  with  his  fel- 
lows in  their  sorrows,  and,  vicariously,  in 
their  sins.    He  had  the  humanistic  temper- 


44     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


ament  which  made  him  an  heir  to  all  the 
woes  of  man  and  beast.  His  pity  was  a 
spring  always  flowing.  Like  Francis  of 
Assisi,  he  felt  a  kinship  with  all  breath- 
ing things,  and  his  charity  knew  no  limits. 
Only  rarely  do  such  men  appear  upon 
earth,  and  surely  no  purer  or  sweeter  soul 
^  has  walked  in  this  New  World. 

With  what  artless  grace  of  simple 
words  Woolman  tells  the  story  of  his  life, 
leaving  out  many  things  lest  he  too  much 
exalt  himself!  Here  are  brief  pictures 
of  Quaker  life  in  the  old  Jersey  home,  with 
its  dignity,  its  simplicity,  its  refinement 
alike  of  habit  and  of  fa:ith.  As  a  boy  he 
\/  once  killed  a  mother-robin  by  accident, 
and  the  horror  of  it  haunted  him  for  days, 
sending  him  to  his  knees  to  beg  the  for- 
giveness of  God.  A  discourtesy  to  his 
mother  cast  a  shadow  over  him  for  weeks, 
afflicting  him  sorely.  Delightful  it  is  to 
read  of  his  religious  experiences  in  those 
early  years,  particularly  at  the  time  of  his 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  45 


adolescence.  Here  is  a  passage  to  ponder, 
if  so  that  we  may  feel  a  like  regret  when 
we  say  more  than  is  required  of  us :  "One 
day,  being  under  a  strong  exercise  of 
spirit,  I  stood  up  and  said  some  words  in 
meeting;  but  not  keeping  close  to  the 
divine  opening,  I  said  more  than  Avas 
required  of  me.  Being  soon  sensible  of 
my  error,  I  was  afflicted  in  mind  some 
weeks,  without  any  light  or  comfort,  even 
to  that  degree  that  I  could  not  take  satis- 
faction in  anj'thing." 

Woolman  was  one  of  the  first  to  see  and 
feel  the  horror  of  slavery,  and  much  of  his 
life  was  spent  in  inducing  the  Quakers  to 
abjure  it.  So  we  find  him  journeying  to 
and  fro,  working  at  his  trade  as  a  tailor 
to  pay  his  way,  from  one  Yearly  Meeting 
of  Friends  to  another,  all  the  way  from 
New  England  to  the  Carolinas.  He  had 
not  the  vehemence  of  an  agitator,  but 
spoke,  rather,  in  sorrowful  remonstrance 
against  an  evil  which  weighed  heavily  upon 


46     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


his  soul  by  night  and  day.  He  moved 
among  men  as  an  embodied  conscience. 
Yet  he  was  so  gentle,  so  gracious,  so  lov- 
ingly wise  withal  that  men  could  not  be 
offended  even  when  he  probed  them  most 
deeply.  It  was  largely  through  his  influ- 
ence and  labors  that  the  Friends  repu- 
diated slavery.  Once  at  least  it  was 
granted  him  to  see,  in  a  rapt  and  pro- 
phetic vision,  the  fulfillment  of  his  dream. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  saw  "The 
day  of  the  Lord  approaching  when  the 
man  who  is  most  wise  in  human  policy 
shall  be  the  greatest  fool;  and  the  arm 
that  is  mighty  to  support  injustice  shall  be 
broken  in  pieces ;  the  enemies  of  the  right- 
eous shall  make  a  terrible  rattle,  and  shall 
mightily  torment  one  another ;  for  He  that 
is  omnipotent  is  rising  up  to  judgment, 
and  will  plead  the  cause  of  the  oppressed ; 
and  He  commanded  me  to  open  the 
vision." 

Whittier,  in  a  note  on  this  passage. 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  47 


says  that  some  may  regard  these  as  the 
words  of  a  distempered  imagination,  but 
that  those  who  have  eyes  will  see  their 
explanation  in  the  Civil  War.  At  times 
the  simple  words  of  the  simple  Woolman 
took  on  a  lofty  and  stately  demeanor,  and 
marched  with  majestic  tread.  Take  these 
lines,  which  are  the  noblest  in  the  Journal, 
written  shortly  after  his  vision  of  victory : 
"The  place  of  prayer  is  a  precious  habita- 
tion; for  I  now  saw  that  the  prayers  of 
the  saints  were  precious  incense;  and  a 
trumpet  was  given  me  that  I  might  sound 
forth  this  language;  that  the  children 
might  hear  it  and  be  invited  together  to 
this  precious  habitation,  where  the  prayers 
of  the  saints,  as  sweet  incense,  arise  before 
the  throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb.  I  saw 
this  habitation  to  be  safe — to  be  inwardly 
quiet  when  there  were  great  stirrings  and 
commotions  in  the  world.  Prayer,  at  this 
day,  in  pure  resignation,  is  a  precious 
place;  the  trumpet  is  sounded;  the  call 


48     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


goes  forth  to  the  church  that  she  gather 
to  the  place  of  pure  inward  prayer;  and 
her  habitation  is  safe." 

Ill 

Woolman  took  to  wife  Sarah  Ellis,  a 
sweet  girl  who  was  at  once  devoted  and 
devout,  and  lived  in  a  tiny  whitewashed 
cottage  on  Rancocas  Creek  in  West 
Jersey.  There,  amid  his  apple  trees  which 
he  planted  and  cultivated,  he  was  most 
happy,  what  time  he  was  not  going  to  and 
fro  spreading  his  gospel  of  purity  and 
pity.  It  was  an  humble  abode,  but  he  was 
content.  He  regarded  agriculture  as  the 
business  most  conducive  to  moral  and 
physical  health,  and  was  wont  to  say  that 
>*if  the  leadings  of  the  Spirit  were  more 
attended  to,  more  people  would  be  engaged 
in  the  sweet  employment  of  husbandry, 
where  labor  is  agreeable  and  healthful." 
He  did  not  condemn  honest  wealth,  but  saw 
/^that  luxury  rots  men  and  deforms  women. 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  49 

From  his  little  farm  he  looked  out  with 
a  mingled  feeling  of  wonder  and  sorrow 
upon  the  fret  and  unrest  of  the  world,  and 
especially  was  he  grieved  to  see  luxury 
overgrowing  the  early  simplicity  of  his 
own  religious  society.  He  regarded  the 
merely  rich  man  with  unfeigned  pity. 
With  none  of  his  scorn,  he  yet  had  all 
the  feeling  of  Thoreau  for  men  who  went 
about  bowed  down  with  the  weight  of 
broad  acres  and  great  houses  on  their 
backs.  Near  the  end  of  his  life  he  went 
to  England  on  a  religious  errand,  travel- 
ing in  steerage,  despite  the  protest  of  his 
friends,  rather  than  endure  the  luxury  of 
the  cabin.  There  he  saw  the  hardship  of 
the  life  of  the  sailor,  and  it  haunted  him 
to  the  end.  A  storm  came  up  raidsea,  and 
for  a  time  all  seemed  lost,  but  Woolman, 
inwardly  still,  went  about  among  the 
panic-stricken  company  giving  words  of 
cheer.  It  reminds  one  of  a  like  day  in 
the  life  of  Fox  when  his  ship  was  pursued 


50     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


by  pirates,  "but  there  was  a  spirit  in  her 
that  could  not  be  taken." 

Arriving  in  England  almost  ill,  Wool- 
man  was  coolly  received  at  first,  but  later 
was  given  warm  welcome  among  Friends. 
During  the  four  months  of  his  stay  he 
went  to  many  places,  wrote  several  essays, 
and  labored  abundantly  but  somewhat  sor- 
rowfully. On  all  sides  he  saw  the  intimate 
connection  between  luxury  and  oppres- 
sion, and  the  burden  of  the  laboring  poor 
lay  dark  upon  his  sensitive  spirit.  He 
would  not  ride  on  stagecoaches  because 
of  the  harsh  treatment  of  the  horses.  In 
his  lonely  wanderings  in  the  rural  districts 
and  in  the  manufacturing  towns  he  saw 
one  class  eager  and  greedy  for  gain,  while 
the  many  were  ph^'sically  and  morally  de- 
graded. It  broke  his  heart,  and  his  health 
and  vitality  failed.  At  York  he  fell  ill 
with  smallpox,  and  after  a  few  days'  suf- 
fering died  in  1772. 

His  death  was  beautiful  with  "inward 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  51 


stillness,"  as  befitted  his  life.  Words  of 
prayer  and  praise  and  resignation  to  the 
will  of  God  were  always  on  his  lips.  Never 
in  his  life  did  he  offer  prayers  for  special 
personal  favors,  but  always  for  the  uni- 
versal well-being.  He  was,  to  use  his  own 
words,  so  mixed  with  his  fellows  in  their 
misery  that  he  did  not  consider  himself  a 
separate  being.  In  his  last  prayer,  beau- 
tiful beyond  any  words  save  his  own,  he 
remembered  "my  fellow  creatures  sepa- 
rated from  the  divine  harmony."  It  closed 
with  the  words,  "Thy  will,  O  Father,  be 
done."  His  last  words,  written  down  with 
great  difficulty,  were :  "I  believe  my  being 
here  is  in  the  wisdom  of  Christ ;  I  know  not 
as  to  life  or  death."  That  was  all,  and 
that  was  enough  both  for  wisdom  and  for 
faith. 

IV 

Of  the  Quakers  we  may  say  in  the 
words  of  Woolman:  "I  found  no  narrow- 
ness respecting  sects  and  opinions,  but 


52     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


believed  that  sincere,  upright-hearted 
people,  in^  every  society,  who  truly  love 
God,  were  accepted  of  him."  So  we  find 
him  writing  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  and 
John  Huss  as  friends  and  fellow  lovers  of 
one  God  and  Father.  He  made  his  own 
the  great  saying  of  Penn,  so  dear  to  the 
heart  of  Lincoln,  that  the  meek,  the  just, 
the  pious,  the  devout,  are  everywhere  of 
one  religion,  and  that  when  death  hath 
taken  off  the  masks  of  flesh  they  will  know 
and  love  one  another.  Of  that  invisible 
church  of  the  Spirit,  to  which  all  good 
men  belong,  and  wliich  overarches  all 
sects,  Woolman,  like  Fox  and  Whittier, 
was  a  God-illumined  prophet. 

Indeed,  if  one  would  know  the  genius  of 
the  Quaker,  and  the  depth  of  his  "silent 
worship,"  one  must  go  far  back  and  high 
up.  Quietism  has  been  the  quest  of  the 
greatest  souls  of  the  Christian  centuries, 
and  the  achievement  of  a  few.  That  pas- 
sage is  the  Confessions  of  Saint  Augustine 


WOOLMAN,  THE  QUAKER  53 


— perhaps  the  greatest  passage  outside 
the  Bible — in  which  he  describes  his  "one 
moment  of  knowledge,"  is  a  perfect  de- 
scription of  the  vision  of  Fox  and  the 
Quakers.  All  down  the  ages  one  can  trace 
this  quest,  now  through  Teresa  and 
Molinos,  now  through  Fox  and  Fenelon — a 
stream  of  sweetness  and  earnestness,  of 
quietness  and  confidence,  flowing  down  to 
our  own  Emerson,  whose  secret  was  "a 
holy  and  wise  silence  in  which  God  dwells." 
When  Emerson  was  last  in  England,  the 
author  of  "Mark  Rutherford"  asked  him 
who  were  his  chief  friends  in  America. 
He  replied,  "I  find  many  among  the 
Quakers." 

There  is  nothing  in  this  faith  akin  to 
such  benumbing  quietism  as  we  find  in  the 
Bhagavad  Gita,  which  describes  the  ideal 
man  as  one  who  lives  quiet-eyed  and  serene, 
passionless  and  unperplexed,  too  high  for 
gladness,  grief,  or  fear.  God  forbid !  That 
is  not  victory ;  it  is  indifference.  Had 


54     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


Lincoln  attained  to  such  stainless,  un- 
troubled calm,  would  slavery  have  been 
destroyed?  Never!  Nor  would  the 
Quakers  have  been  among  his  most  loyal 
and  heroic  helpers.  No ;  it  does  not  take 
refuge  in  indifference,  but,  rather,  in  the 
holy  habitation  of  prayer,  where,  as  Wool- 
man  said,  there  is  safety,  consolation,  and 
conquest,  and  where  we  may  learn  the 
meaning  of  the  words  spoken  of  old:  "Be 
still  and  know  that  I  am  God." 


CHAPTER  III 

WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 

There  are  classic  men  as  there  are 
classic  books.  A  classic  man  is  one  who, 
though  deeply  rooted  in  the  soil  of  his  age 
and  speaking  to  its  problems,  has,  never- 
theless, by  virtue  of  the  depth  and  clarity 
of  his  insight,  a  message  to  the  times  fol- 
lowing. Wesley  and  Woolman  are  classic 
men,  examples  alike  of  saintliness  of  char- 
acter and  fruitfulness  in  social  service; 
and  it  is  believed  that  they  have  somewhat 
to  say  to  the  sorely  tried  church  of  to- 
day. 

Such  men  form  a  part  of  that  perpet- 
ual revelation  which  the  Eternal  is  mak- 
ing of  Himself  to  humanity;  and  it  be- 
hooves us  who  are  ill  at  ease  in  our  low 
estate  of  spiritual  power  to  study  their 
high,  heroic  lives.  Their  value  to  us  in 
these  days  is  the  testimony  they  make 
55 


56     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


clear  and  persuasive  of  the  reality  of  the 
living  Christ,  and  his  power  to  revive  the 
church  and  lead  it  to  victorious  achieve- 
ment. Change  has  come  over  the  world 
since  the  time  when  Wesley  and  Woolman 
labored,  the  meaning  and  direction  of 
which,  even  still,  are  hard  to  know — a 
change  from  era  to  era.  The  paths 
trodden  by  the  footsteps  of  centuries  have 
been  broken  up;  old  things  have  passed 
away,  and  our  imagination  can  but  feebly 
penetrate  to  their  vanished  woi'ld.  Never- 
theless, because  they  had  to  do  with  things 
timeless  and  eternal,  they  may  have  speech 
with  us. 

I 

There  are  men  still  young,  as  we  now 
reckon  age,  whose  lives  have  covered  the 
whole  period  of  the  advent  and  advance 
of  the  science  of  sociology.  Comte  coined 
the  word  in  1857,  and  ten  years  later 
Karl  Marx  sent  forth  his  volume.  Das 
Capital,  which  has  become  the  sacred  book 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  57 


of  Socialism — though  perhaps  the  mem- 
bers of  that  cult  read  their  scriptures  as 
little  as  the  followers  of  other  faiths  read 
theirs.  At  the  same  time  science  was 
winning  its  way,  flushed  with  power,  rad- 
ical, irreverent,  unveiling  the  lucid  and 
wise  order  of  the  world  under  the  sway  of 
law;  and  the  personal  God  of  our  fathers 
seemed  to  fade  into  a  vast,  vague, 
impersonal  Power.  Democracy  too  made 
itself  felt,  leveling  down  while  lifting 
up,  declaring  the  voice  of  the  people 
to  be  the  voice  of  God,  proclaiming  the 
end  of  the  Rule  of  Force  and  the  com- 
ing of  the  Rule  of  Numbers.  Life  became 
every  year  more  intricate,  as  men  were 
drawn  closer  together  under  the  gray 
smoke-cloud  of  industrialism,  and  were 
more  and  more  moved  as  one  man  by  com- 
mon impulses  and  aims. 

Forces  such  as  these,  and  others  of  a 
sort  similar,  have  made  this  the  Age  of  the 
Crowd.     Never  were  human  bodies  so 


58     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


jostled  and  jammed;  never  were  human 
souls  so  much  alone.  We  are  in  the  midst 
of  the  collective  despotism  predicted  forty 
years  ago.  Reliance  is  being  increasingly 
put  upon  coercion  of  the  will  by  external 
pressure,  as  if  public  opinion,  law,  or  the 
tyranny  of  the  Many  had  become  the 
modern  evangel.  Men  move  in  masses. 
Often  they  huddle  together  in  a  way  to 
suggest  weakness  rather  than  strength, 
for  not  all  of  the  spirit  of  fraternity  in 
our  day  is  born  of  faith  in  a  Divine 
Father.  Some  of  it,  strangely  enough, 
is  due  to  a  loss  of  faith  in  the  highest 
appeals.  Unable  or  unwilling  to  be  alone, 
men  crowd  together,  seeking  escape  in 
fellowship — and  naturally  so,  if  God  be 
only  a  cold,  bare  Infinitude !  There  is  an- 
other side  to  modern  life — its  passion  for 
reality,  its  humane  pity,  its  fruitful  ideal- 
ism ;  but  it  has  a  dual  aspect. 

At  any  rate,  the  word  "social,"  whether 
we  attach  an  "ism"  to  it  or  not,  is  tlie 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  59 


great  word  of  our  time.  We  think  in 
terms  of  the  mass,  under  the  sense  of  a 
vast  solidarity,  and  "loyalty  to  the  be- 
loved community"  was  recently  declared 
by  Josiah  Royce  to  be  the  essence  and 
aspiration  of  religion.  As  men  are 
crowded  together  they  more  and  more 
realize  that  together  they  must  reach  the 
heights  or  sink  to  the  depths.  Such  is  the 
trend  of  the  age,  and  its  results  not  only 
upon  our  ways  of  thinking,  but  upon  faith 
and  character  as  well,  are  obvious  to  any 
student  of  modern  life. 

Once  religion  was  all  a  personal  matter. 
"The  simple  question  is,"  cried  Newman 
in  his  agony  at  Littlemore,  "can  I  be 
saved  in  the  English  Church.''  Am  I  in 
safety  were  I  to  die  to-night.''"  With 
the  old  Puritan  it  was  the  same — is  my 
calling  and  election  sure?  How  strange 
and  far  off  those  fears  seem  to  men  who 
live  in  a  universe  where  not  even  an  atom 
is  ever  lost !   Such  questions  are  now  herd 


60     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


to  betray  a  selfish,  if  not  morbid,  concern 
for  personal  safety.  No;  the  point  of 
view  has  shifted  from  the  old  emphasis 
upon  personal  piety  to  a  demand  for 
social  justice  and  service.  The  Christian 
of  to-day,  instead  of  fleeing  from  the  City 
of  Destruction,  like  the  Bunyan  pilgrim, 
is  called  upon  to  save  the  city.  Our  theo- 
logians, once  so  talkative  about  abstract 
propositions,  are  now  busy  trying  to 
divine  how  the  "social  mind"  acts,  and 
what  it  thinks — though  it  is  not  yet  clear 
that  the  social  mind  is  anything  more  than 
a  metaphor.  Surely,  he  is  a  poor  prophet, 
and  no  poet  at  all,  who  does  not  feel  the 
thrill  and  promise  of  this  social  mysticism 
in  its  eager,  aspiring  quest  for  right.  Yet 
it  must  be  plain  that  such  a  tendency  may 
easily  sweep  us  too  far  into  another  ex- 
treme, if,  indeed,  it  has  not  already  done 
so. 

With  all  this  passion  for  humanit}'-,  this 
demand  for  social  salvation,  every  live 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  61 


man  must  be  in  deep  sympathy.  It  is 
magnificent — this  call  to  clean  up  the 
world  and  set  the  social  order  right.  It 
is  heroic — this  faith  that  ills  long  held  to 
be  necessary  evils,  if  not  inevitable  parts 
of  the  human  order,  need  not  and  must 
not  continue  to  be.  It  is  prophetic — this 
sense  of  human  society  as  a  family,  and 
the  effort  to  apply  the  truths  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  to  political  and 
economic  relations.  The  heaven  possible 
to  men  here,  and  the  hells  of  vice  and 
misery  that  burn  around  us,  these  occupy 
the  thoughts  of  men  to-day,  as  they  come 
to  think  in  terms  of  social  duty  and  hope. 
And  yet,  with  no  desire  to  cool  this  social 
ardor,  but  with  a  wish  to  conserve  it, 
deepen  it,  and  direct  it,  we  must  keep  our 
poise  between  the  peril  of  extremes,  and 
lay  equal  emphasis  upon  the  quality  of 
the  units  of  the  social  order. 


62     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


II 

Notwithstanding  the  current  stress 
upon  things  social,  it  is  still  true  that  reli- 
gion is  the  most  intimate  and  personal  of 
all  human  concerns.  God  does  not  call 
men  en  masse,  or  by  groups,  but,  in  the 
ancient  word  of  Isaiah,  "/  have  called  thee 
by  thy  name," — not  that  we  may  render 
less  social  service,  but  vastly  more.  In- 
deed, the  crowning  glory  of  man,  and  the 
basis  of  all  valid  social  idealism,  is  that 
we  are  not  numbered  prisoners  in  the  end- 
less lockstep  march  of  blind  Fate.  Unless 
this  truth  be  kept  vividly  in  mind,  the 
worth  of  the  soul  and  the  sanctity  of 
human  difference  will  be  erased  in  the  gen- 
eral blur.  Admit  that  the  old  individual- 
ism was  imperfect,  it  could  not  have  been 
so  bad  as  it  would  be  for  all  to  be  reduced 
to  the  dead  level  of  a  herd. 

Obeisance  to  the  divinity  of  mere  num- 
bers is  a  superstition.  Massed  ignorance 
never  yet  has  made  wisdom.    Crowds  with- 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  63 


out  vision,  throngs  without  the  leadership 
of  spiritual  faith,  multitudes  without 
character  are  a  terror  and  a  plague.  An 
assembly  of  idiots  is  depressing ;  its  size  is 
its  shame.  No  doubt  a  remedy  for  many  of 
the  ills  of  democracy  is  more  democracy, 
but  democracy  itself  must  be  saved  from 
itself.  Have  we  not  heard  of  late  that 
"our  whole  life  and  mind  to-day  is  satu- 
rated with  the  slow,  upward  infiltration  of 
a  new  spirit — that  of  an  emancipated, 
atheistic  democracy.'*"  ^  Obviously,  the 
shifting  of  the  accent  of  religion  from  per- 
sonal piety  to  social  activity,  in  so  far 
as  it  results  in  what  Harnack  calls  "an 
acute  secularizing  of  Christianity,"  can- 
not cope  with  the  new  spirit.  Only  a  saint 
with  the  blended  qualities  of  a  Cromwell 
and  a  Francis  of  Assisi  can  stem  such  a 
tide. 

Moreover,  no  man  has  ever  rendered 
any  vital  service  to  his  kind,  social  or 

'Winds  of  Doctrine,  by  Santayana. 


64     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


otherwise,  who  was  not  able,  if  need  be,  to 
stand  ajone  against  the  mass.  Call  the 
names  of  the  great  soldiers  of  social  right- 
eousness, from  Luther  to  Lincoln,  and  it 
will  be  found  that  they  were  "friends  of 
God,"  drawing  their  strength  and  valor 
from  hidden  springs.  Of  this  truth 
Wesley  and  Woolman  were  shining  wit- 
nesses. If  they  were  crusaders  in  action, 
they  were  first  quietists  in  faith  and  expe- 
rience. The  "place  of  prayer,"  as  Wool- 
man  called  it,  was  ever  for  them  what  the 
Joyous  Gard  in  the  Morte  d' Arthur  was 
to  Sir  Lancelot — a  stronghold  of  quiet 
whence  they  issued  forth  to  rescue  those 
that  were  oppressed,  and  to  do  knightly 
deeds.  They  were  still,  strong  men  who 
lived  in  the  faith  that  they  were  "never 
less  alone  than  when  alone,"  and  by  that 
power  they  wrought  heroically  and  hope- 
fully. 

There  are  none  to  deny  that  we  must 
press  forward  toward  righteousness — that 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  65 


we  must  hunger  and  thirst  after  a  collec- 
tive life  that  is  just  and  merciful  and 
pure;  but  it  becomes  clearer  every  year 
that  the  ideal  state  cannot  be  approached, 
much  less  reached,  save  through  the  help 
of  Another  than  ourselves.  Even  so  rad- 
ical a  thinker  as  H.  G.  Wells — and  he  is 
a  thinker  of  no  common  order — restless, 
penetrating,  subtle,  forecasting,  full  of 
self-questionings,  and,  at  times,  of  all- 
questionings,  seems  to  be  finding  his  way 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  not  enough  to  "rally 
the  good  in  the  depth  of  thyself,"  but  that 
we  need  God — even  if  we  cannot  realize 
his  presence.  Hear  him,  in  The  Passion- 
ate Friends:  "There  are  no  valid  argu- 
ments against  a  great-spirited  Socialism 
but  this,  that  people  will  not.  Indolence, 
greed,  meanness  of  spirit,  the  aggressive- 
ness of-  authority,  and,  above  all,  jeal- 
ousy— these  are  the  real  obstacles  to  those 
brave,  large  reconstructions,  those  profit- 
able abnegations  and  brotherly  feats  of 


66     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


generosity  that  will  yet  turn  human  life — 
of  which  our  individual  lives  are  but 
momentary  parts — into  a  glad,  beautiful, 
and  triumphant  cooperation  all  around 
this  sunlit  world." 

Just  so ;  but  are  the^e  not  other  things 
than  those  named  that  stand  in  the  way? 
What  is  it  that  so  tragically  delays  the 
march  of  man  toward  that  better  social 
order  whereof  our  poets  dream  and  our 
young  men  see  visions?  Our  age  is  full 
of  schemes  of  every  kind  for  the  reform 
and  betterment  of  mankind.  Why  do  they 
not  succeed?  Some  of  them  may  fail 
because  they  are  ill-considered,  in  that 
they  expect  too  much  of  human  nature 
and  do  not  take  due  account  of  the  stub- 
born facts  of  life.  But  even  the  wisest 
plan  fails  to  accomplish  a  tithe  of  what 
its  advocates  labor  artd  pray  to  bring 
about.  Why  is  it  so?  Because  there  are 
not  enough  men  fine  enough  of  soul,  large 
enough  of  sympathy,  and  pure  enough  of 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  67 


heart  to  make  the  dream  come  true !  One 
reads  the  words  of  Wells,  so  vivid  with 
prophetic  idealism,  and  the  saying  of 
Christ  comes  to  mind:  '^Ye  must  be  born 
again." 

Ill 

The  problem  of  our  day,  as  of  every 
other  day  since  tlie  church  began  her 
morning  march  in  the  world- — only  it  is 
felt  to  be  more  pressing  in  our  time — is 
the  problem  of  the  church  and  the  street. 
When  the  church  forgets  the  street,  or 
neglects  it,  religion  becomes  a  hollow 
formalism  or  a  dead  respectability,  and 
life  in  the  street  becomes  a  hideous 
scramble  where  heart  treads  on  heart. 
By  the  same  token,  every  revival  of  faith, 
every  return  of  Pentecostal  vision  and 
power,  has  witnessed  a  return  of  the 
church  to  the  street.  There  is  not  an  ex- 
ception— unless  it  be  the  Oxford  Move- 
ment under  Newman,  wliich  was  more  a 
reaction  than  a  revival.    Indeed,  the  secret 


68     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


of  the  early  church,  as  Delssmann  has  so 
clearly  shown,  was  that  it  came  down  to 
the  man  in  the  street,  offering  him  hope. 
Its  appeal  was  hardly  heard  in  high 
places,  but  it  was  gladly  heard  in  the 
mean  streets.  It  was  so  in  the  days  of 
Francis  of  Assisi  in  "the  Galilee  of  Italy." 
It  was  so  under  Eckliart  and  Tauler, 
under  Luther  and  Fox.  What  means  the 
cry  for  social  service  to-day,  if  it  be  not 
that  the  church  is  aware  that  she  has  lived 
too  far  from  the  street  where  the  feet  of 
men  are  often  weary,  and  where  traps  are 
set  to  catch  the  loose  steps  of  the  wander- 
ing.'' Have  not  Wesley  and  Woolman 
somewhat  to  teach  us  here?  They  too  led 
a  smug  and  indolent  church  out  of  doors 
into  the  street,  even  into  the  byways 
and  hedges,  as  ever  the  Mystics  have 
done. 

For  they  were  mystics,  albeit  Wesley 
was  slow  to  admit  his  affinity  with  mysti- 
cism, and  at  times  was  wont  to  be  a  keen 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  69 


critic  of  its  excesses.  At  one  time  he  was 
intolerant  of  Quietism,  from  which  his 
movement  was,  on  one  side,  lineally  de- 
scended. Yet  we  find  him  editing  the  writ- 
ings of  Madame  Guyon,  who  was  a  fol- 
lower of  Molinos,  and  in  turn  a  teacher 
of  Fenelon ;  and  he  was  right  in  saying 
that  his  break  with  Zinzendorf  was  largely 
a  dispute  about  words.  As  for  Woolman, 
he  was  of  the  company  of  those  who  are 
led  by  the  Shepherd  of  Souls,  and  who 
partake  of  the  Sacrament  of  Sorrow  from 
the  hand  of  the  Master  himself.  More  is 
unuttered  than  uttered  in  his  simple  writ- 
ings— he  so  feared  the  fluency  that  goes 
beyond  fact — yet  underneath  the  austere 
restraint  of  his  style  one  may  read  an 
inner  experience  akin  to  that  of  Bunyan 
or  Pascal.  In  the  phrase  of  the  Friends 
after  his  death,  he  "underwent  many  deep 
baptisms" ;  how  deep,  his  Journal  shows. 
Daringly  radical,  he  was  divinely  gentle. 
Grown  gray  with  grief  for  the  woes  of 


70     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


mankind,  he  yet  kept  always  "an  inward 
stillness  afid  happy  humility  of  heart." 

William  James  would  have  classed 
Wesley  with  the  "tough-minded"  perhaps, 
and  Woolman  with  the  "tender-minded." 
No  matter;  they  were  both  practical 
mystics,  and  their  vision  led  them  into  the 
places  of  need,  into  the  haunts  of  the  loAvly 
and  the  lonely,  in  heroic  and  dedicated 
service.  The  issues  they  confronted  were 
surprisingly  modern,  and  they  saw  them 
— especially  Woolman  saw  them — with  a 
lucidity  which  allowed  no  evasions.  Per- 
haps, as  is  now  the  fashion  to  say,  their 
method  was  too  individualistic — though 
the  evil  which  Woolman  fought  all  his  life 
was  the  social  horror  of  slavery,  and  he 
set  the  society  of  Friends  against  it.  This 
is  true:  their  sense  of  human  solidarity, 
and  their  feeling  of  complicity  in  the  com- 
mon social  guilt,  were  profound.  At  least 
it  must  be  said  that  they  opened  the  door 
of  the  church  leading  into  the  street ;  and 


WESLEY  AND  W00L:\IAN  71 


if  Wesley  redeemed  England  from  im- 
pending revolution,  Woolman  liberated  a 
spirit  which  overthrew  slavery  in  America. 

IV 

Of  their  social  teaching  we  cannot  study 
here  in  detail.  Economic  analysis  of  the 
modern  sort  we  do  not  expect  in  their 
writings ;  and  yet,  as  enemies  of  slavery, 
they  saw  through  that  evil  to  the  larger 
question  beA^ond— the  degradation  and  ex- 
ploitation of  labor.  Greed  and  the  wish 
for  ease  seemed  to  them  roots  of  all  evil. 
Woolman  in  his  little  essays  on  Labor  and 
Caution  to  the  Rich,  and  Wesley  in  his 
exposition  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
utter  with  equal  eloquence  the  same  solemn 
warning.  At  eighty-seven  Wesley  was 
still  burdened  with  the  fear  that  money 
was  corrupting  his  people.  How  his 
words  flash  before  us  to-day:  "How  is 
it  possible  for  a  rich  man  to  grow  richer 
without  denying  the  Lord  that  bought 


72     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


him?  Yet  how  can  any  man  who  has 
already  the  necessaries  of  life  gain  or  aim 
at  more  and  be  guiltless?  'Lay  not  up,' 
saith  our  Lord,  'treasures  upon  earth.' 
If,  in  spite  of  this,  you  do  and  will  lay 
up  money  or  things  which  moth  or  rust 
may  corrupt,  or  thieves  break  through 
and  steal;  if  you  will  add  house  to  house 
or  field  to  field — why  do  you  call  yourself 
a  Christian?  You  do  not  obey  Jesus 
Christ.  Why  do  you  name  yourself  by 
his  name?  'Why  call  ye  me  Lord,  Lord,' 
saith  he  himself,  'and  do  not  the  things 
that  I  say?' " 

There  are  many  passages  to  the  same 
import  in  the  pages  of  Woolman,  only  he 
wrote  with  a  sense  of  deep  compassion 
toward  his  fellow-creatures  "involved  in 
customs,  grown  up  in  the  wisdom  of  this 
world,  which  is  foolishness  with  God." 
In  his  social  insight  and  passion  he  was  a 
precursor  of  Ruskin  and  Tolstoy,  and  in 
his  sympathy  too,  as  when  he  cried:  "0, 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  73 


may  the  wealthy  consider  the  poor !  May 
those  who  have  plenty  lay  these  things  to 
heart !"  Dear  John  Woolman !  the  weight 
of  human  misery  and  "the  evil  custom  of 
the  world"  lay  upon  him  at  times  like  the 
millions  of  tons  of  water  on  a  diver  in  the 
sea  who  is  climbing  to  the  surface,  which 
he  despairs  of  reaching  with  brain  and 
body  intact !  Yet  was  he  a  forerunner  of 
that  social  imagination  which  will  at  last 
make  the  Golden  Rule  not  a  dream  but  a 
necessity ;  of  the  woi'ld  now  filling  up  with 
men  who  cannot  be  happy  while  others  are 
miserable,  and  who  are  haunted  by  the 
shivering  shapes  of  the  poor  when  they  sit 
down  to  feast !  His  life  was  founded  upon 
Love.  That  love  made  him  suffer,  as  love 
always  does,  and  it  was  therefore  that 
"he  was  as  a  nerve  o'er  which  do  creep 
the  else  unfelt  oppressions  of  the  earth." 
Still,  he  knew  deep  joy  also,  as  all  must 
who,  like  him,  "live  under  the  cross  and 
simply  follow  the  operations  of  truth" — 


74     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


for  there  may  be  peace  where  there  is  little 
ease. 

Indeed,  the  whole  life  of  Woolman  was 
a  struggle  for  personal  piety  against  a 
sense  of  social  sin.  Often  it  carried  him 
to  strange  extremes,  and  all  his  sagacity 
was  needed  to  save  him  from  fanaticism. 
Tainted  money  he  would  not  take.  Food 
cooked  by  the  hands  of  slaves  he  could  not 
eat.  He  could  not  sit  still  and  ride  when 
the  horses  were  lashed  by  brutal  drivers. 
Any  form  of  cruelty  or  injustice  afflicted 
him  with  "bowedness  of  spirit,"  and  often 
made  him  ill  of  body.  He  could  not  bear 
to  profit,  or  to  see  others  profit,  by  the 
painful  or  degrading  labor  of  his  fellows. 
More  than  once  he  touches  on  the  problem 
of  dangerous  trades,  and  he  clearly  saw 
the  fallacy  of  the  old  idea  that  the  pro- 
duction of  luxuries  relieves  economic  dis- 
tress. So  one  might  go  on  through  his 
pages,  including  his  essays  on  wealth  and 
wages,  and  the  fifth  chapter  of  his  Word 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  75 


of  Remembrance,  in  which  he  gave  beauti- 
ful prophecy  of  the  principle  of  social 
settlement.  A  man  of  divine  pit}',  he  fore- 
felt  the  fashion  of  things  to  be,  prophetic 
in  his  sorrow  not  less  than  in  his  vision. 

Though  less  sensitive  of  heart,  Wesle}' 
was  of  like  spirit,  and  the  impetus  of  his 
labors  ramified  everywhither.  As  Isaac 
Taylor  said,  he  furnished  "the  starting 
point  of  our  modern  religious  history  in 
all  that  is  characteristic  of  the  present 
time."  Fruitful  was  the  impulse  he  gave 
to  education,  both  national  and  technical 
— and  religious  too,  for  he  extended  the 
work  of  Robert  Raikes.  In  starting  the 
work  of  Silas  Todd,  the  Foundry  teacher, 
he  anticipated  the  holy  labor  of  John 
Pounds,  the  Portsmouth  cobbler.  He  vis- 
ited prisons  and  ameliorated  the  lot  of 
prisoners  before  John  Howard;  and  his 
work  among  the  miners  bears  fruit  even 
to  this  day.  And  yet,  in  this  long  list,  the 
greatest  labor  of  his  life  was  that  through 


76     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


him  the  gospel  was  once  more  preached 
to  the  poor ! 

V 

What  is  sainthood?  It  is  spiritual 
health,  humane  sympathy,  and  moral 
thoughtfulness.  As  Arnold  of  "Rugby 
said,  "It  is  the  inquiring  love  of  truth 
sustained  by  devoted  love  of  goodness." 
It  is  wholesome,  because  it  is  holy.  It  is 
practice,  not  theory;  consecration,  not 
perfection;  a  condition  of  character,  not 
a  theological  definition.  It  is  the  kinship 
in  willing  and  feeling  of  the  spirit  of  man 
with  the  spirit  of  Christ,  who  was  the  will 
and  heart  of  God  made  flesh.  Now  as  of 
old,  the  hope  of  the  church  lies  in  her 
saints.  When  all  apologetics  fail  to  halt 
the  proud  concourse  of  the  world,  it 
is  the  saints  who  heal  the  wounds  of 
humanity  and  turn  the  wandering  multi- 
tudes from  fruitless  quest  to  the  abiding 
realities. 

Newman  reflected  upon  the  church  of 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  77 


his  birth  that  she  had  failed  to  produce 
saints.  Capable  of  much,  she  was  want- 
ing here.  Bishops,  theologians,  exegists, 
ecclesiastics  she  could  and  did  afford;  but 
saints,  no.  The  challenge  which  Newman 
flung  down,  however  far  from  true  in 
respect  of  the  English  Church,  we  are 
bound  to  take  up  for  ourselves.  If  the 
church  of  to-day  cannot  grow  saints,  she 
will  be  helpless  against  the  incoming  tide 
of  "an  emancipated,  atheistic,  interna- 
tional democracy."  Nor  can  she  do  much 
to  help  forward  the  race  toward  those 
profitable  social  abnegations,  those  broth- 
erly feats  of  generosity  and  fellowship 
that  will  turn  human  life  into  a  glad  co- 
operation all  round  this  sunlit  world. 

Wesley  and  Woolman  were  saints  of 
the  most  high  God.  If  they  were  with  us 
to-day,  no  doubt  the  form  of  their  lives 
would  be  different,  but  their  faith  and 
spirit  would  be  the  same.  They  would  not 
expect  from  sociology  what  no  sociology. 


78     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


however  scientific,  can  ever  give.  Their 
first  concern  would  be  for  a  vivid  and  pro- 
found personal  relation  to  God.  De- 
tached from  minor  entanglements,  they 
would  prove,  with  the  pure  of  all  ages, 
that  the  frontiers  of  the  life  of  man  are 
not  the  stronghold.  But  they  would 
know  that  from  the  Mount  of  Vision  to 
the  multitude  in  need  is  but  a  step,  and 
they  would  continually  take  it,  mediating 
between  the  vigil  of  the  night  and  the 
burden  of  the  day,  knowing  that  vision 
and  service  are  partners.  As  of  old,  they 
would  see  the  sins  of  society  in  the  light 
of  the  cross,  and  discern  in  the  turbid 
ebb  and  flow  of  misery  about  them  the 
sinful  soul,  not  only  of  society,  but  of 
each  of  us — Christ  crucified  afresh,  and 
Ave  assisting  in  his  impalement;  we  press- 
ing the  thorns  upon  his  brow.  Woolman, 
especially,  would  feel,  to  the  piercing  of 
brain  and  nerve,  the  injustice,  the  suffer- 
ing, the  separation  which  our  social  con- 


WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN  79 


ditions  impose.  But  his  hope  of  healing 
would  be  in  Christ  as  mediated  through  a 
tender,  tactful,  compelling  human  min- 
istry. 

When  the  power  of  reclaiming  the  lost 
dies  within  the  church  it  ceases  to  be  the 
church.  It  may  remain  a  useful  insti- 
tution, though  it  may  ver}'  easily  become  a 
mischievous  one.  When  that  power  re- 
mains, whatever  else  may  be  wanting,  it 
may  still  be  said  that  the  tabernacle  of 
God  is  with  men.  By  devoting  her  power 
to  reclaiming  and  nurturing  the  souls  of 
men,  and  by  refining  and  exalting  their 
social  relations,  the  church  is  doing  fun- 
damental work  in  behalf  of  all  high  en- 
terprises— a  work  without  which  no  cause, 
however  holy,  can  win.  B}'  as  much  as 
she  succeeds,  every  noble  cause  succeeds. 
If  she  fails.-*  Often  the  church  has  failed, 
by  folly  or  default,  and  then  her  Master 
has  come  again — as  he  has  been  coming 
all  down  the  centuries — giving  a  new  date 


80     WESLEY  AND  WOOLMAN 


to  history  and  a  new  impetus  to  humanity' . 
In  the  furnace  fires  of  every  revolution 
there  has  been  seen  a  form  like  unto  the 
Son  of  man !  He  is  with  us  to-day  in  these 
new  and  changed  times,  as  he  was  with 
Wesley  and  Woolman — nearer,  it  often 
seems,  than  he  has  ever  been  since  he 
walked  in  Galilee. 


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